Israel-Palestine: The Continuing Debacle
Old habits die hard. George W. Bush administration is almost 8 years old, an age that in human life expectancy may equal to 80 years. Facing the termination of his presidency G. W. Bush is hesitant to make serious changes in his Israeli – Palestinian strategy, although his previous achievements fall much shorter then his…
Read MoreRe-defining African-american
The recent arrival of significant numbers of people of African descent in the United States from Central and South America and the Caribbean as well as the continent of Africa has posed major questions about the definition of African Americans and the relationships that these recent arrivals are having with the indigenous African-American community. How…
Read MoreWho Are The Palestinians Today?
Five years before his death in 1980, Henry Pachter — my former teacher and friend – published an article in Dissent that enraged the editors: It was entitled “Who Are the Palestinians?”[1] Knowledge about “the occupation” and sympathy for Israel among the Left – and especially among the Jewish Left in the great urban centers…
Read MoreRetribution Against Heads Of State And Prime Ministers
The subject of retribution after WWII has fascinated me for a long time; I can even confess to making snail’s progress in writing a book on collaboration, resistance and retribution in Europe during and after WWII. The origin of the fascination is that, back in 1946, I witnessed some of the court proceedings and even the…
Read MoreAmerican Democracy after Bush: Out with the Republican Party, in with the Republican Spirit
The Bush reign ended symbolically with hurricane Kathrina. When the news media talked about “refugees” fleeing New Orleans; when the TV showed the terrible scenes of those unable to flee who were left to fend for themselves in a football stadium-or, when I was asked a few days later to appear on a talk radio…
Read MoreThe Academic Boycott Of Israel: Objections And Defense
Introductory Comments and a General Defense Boycotts are historically common and popular forms of protest. Unlike sanctions, which are enforced by governments and sometimes destroy the lives of millions of ordinary people (as in the case of the 12-years of sanctions against Iraq, and the on-going Western sanctions against Hamas and the Gaza Strip), boycotts…
Read MoreAn Arab View Of The Neocons And The Oil Lobby
An intellectually formidable friend and I were discussing everything under the sun at a qahwa (coffee shop) in Cairo, fairly late at night and dead in the middle of winter. I brought up Greg Palast’s account of the Iraq war and the squabbles between the two main advocates of the war – the neo-cons and…
Read MoreHow Would Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Be Relevant Today?
I As we scome to the end of the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit (PhS),[1] I am reminded of a remark made a decade ago by the noted Hegel-scholar Robert Pippin. He then entertained the possibility of what a sequel to the PhS would look like were Hegel able to…
Read MoreFrench Republican Ideals And Immigration
As disparate historical figures as Marc Bloch, an historian, scholar, and a Jew, and Toussaint L’Ouverture, a black and a slave until he was forty-five years old, subscribed to the principles of the French Republic-liberty, equality, fraternity – until the end of their lives. In his written commentary about the capitulation of France to the…
Read MoreCelebrating Moravia At 100
A Focus on (the) Character Alberto Moravia (1907-1990) was one the great novelists of the 20th century. Born in Rome as Alberto Pincherle, Moravia’s father was a Jewish architect and painter born in Venice; his mother was a Catholic from Ancona, on the Adriatic Sea. Stricken at age nine by bone tuberculosis, his school attendance…
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